Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has “rejected with contempt” allegations that she received $5,000 (about R70,000) from a Gupta-linked account, describing it as “malicious and defamatory.”
The allegation is contained in a report by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) published Tuesday.
The report alleged that banking multinational HSBC flagged the transfer to Mkhwebane’s First National Bank (FNB) account in 2014 from an account in an HSBC subsidiary bank in Hong Kong.
The flag on Mkhwebane’s alleged funds receipt was part of a highly restricted internal HSBC investigation that sought to identify a network of Gupta-linked accounts and companies around the world.
The Guptas are at the center of South Africa’s Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, which is currently holding hearings on the family’s role in grand corruption during former President Jacob Zuma’s time in office from 2009 to 2018.
In a statement to OCCRP, Mkhwebane’s spokesman Oupa Segwale pressed home that the Public Protector has no links to the Guptas.
“Advocate Mkhwebane would like to place on the record the fact that she heard for the first time from the OCCRP last Thursday that she had been ‘flagged.’ HSBC has never brought this ‘flagging’ to her attention and she has absolutely no links with the Guptas.”
The OCCRP report added that: “HSBC included the payment among thousands of flagged transactions involving dozens of offshore companies that laundered payments structured as kickbacks from a Chinese rail company in a deal that involved Gupta associates.”
But Segalwe disputed this in the statement saying by the OCCRP’s own admission in their written request to the Public Protector for comment, it said there was no indication that the source of the funds were from the Gupta network, but only saying she was flagged as part of it by the bank.
The OCCRP report emphasised that there’s no indication of wrongdoing on Mkhwebane’s part, but that the alleged payment was made just one day before Mkhwebane left her position as a South African Embassy official in China.
In addition to the statement, Mkhwebane, posting on her personal Twitter account, challenged the OCCRP to produce proof of the alleged transfer.
The statement added that Mkhwebane views this as part of a wider campaign to discredit her.
The Public Protector said that since she started “investigating the conduct of certain powerful people, she has been the target of dirty tricks by some some figures and their allies in political circles, civil society, and the media.”
Mkhwebane added that a “certain politician was pushing for her arrest on the false claims that she was involved in the passing of her husband and money laundering.”
